


Sisyphus and Death

by MabelLover



Series: Moirai [10]
Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Death, F/M, How Do I Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabelLover/pseuds/MabelLover
Summary: The girl looks at him with pity, having watched his fruitless efforts over and over again. Dimitri scoffs and starts the machine once more."It won't work," she says, staring down at the chains that lock her up."I know," he answers "I know."
Series: Moirai [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554079
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Sisyphus and Death

The girl looks at him with pity, having watched his fruitless efforts over and over again. Dimitri scoffs and starts the machine once more.

"It won't work," she says, staring down at the chains that lock her up.

"I know," he answers "I know."

* * *

Dimitri remembers mostly the smell of smoke. It was everywhere in that building, that day. It permeated every piece of clothing he wore - the lab coat had to be thrown away, he couldn't wear it anymore.

Somewhere in the very back of his mind, right where he put the things he doesn't want to remember, there is the feeling of Claire's body in his arms, right where he had always wanted her to be. But she was cold, unmovable, dead. It was his punishment, surely, for wishing something that wasn't his.

He cut himself open over and over again, hoping to feel a faction of what she'd suffered. But the reflection on the bathroom mirror showed a ragged young man with numb eyes, and the wounds didn't even tingle any longer. He wondered, somewhere in the fuzz that inhabited him, if it really worked.

* * *

The girl - never named, no, because it would make what he was doing too real - looked young, but her eyes betrayed her, like Dimitri's betrayed him. She was anything but a child. She'd seen terrible things, maybe even done some. She was like him in that aspect. Never innocent, never blameless. Guilty, guilty as charged, Your Honour.

Her pulses were purple from the chains, a reaction calculated to make her pass as human. His arms were filled with scars, in an attempt to rid himself of his humanity.

He needed to be something far bigger that Man, Life and Death to do what he wanted.

* * *

Dimitri's first kill was there, in the laboratory, with Claire's body on the ground and his hands around Bill's neck. He'd squeezed until the man's face was purple and his hands came up to the choke hold and tried to scrape them off. Dimitri almost let go in shock, but a wave of rage came over him and he tightened and Bill stopped moving. His hands fell to the sides.

He ran. He passed the police and the bystanders and Hershel Layton. He looked back only once.

* * *

Descole laughed at him when they first met.

"What use could you be to me, Dimitri Allen? What could I gain from your help?"

He smirked and walked up to Dimitri, swishing his cape.

"You know nothing of the Azran."

"But I do." The masked man stopped. Dimitri clenched his fist.

"My team worked with an Azran power source. I know how they work - I even know where to find them. You must surely know that they provide-"

"Clean energy in large amounts if handled properly, even being able to substitute any other power source," Descole completed. "But that is only theoretical. No one has ever been able to work one."

"Well, I have."

The caped man paused, a hand stroking his chin in contemplation. Dimitri shifted nervously.

* * *

He punched the wall again. And again. And again. He stopped when he stopped seeing red, and belatedly realized that he was bleeding.

The girl was watching again, curiosity coloring her features. She didn't bleed - in some accounts she couldn't even be considered a living being. An Homunculous, perhaps, if he remembered correctly. She was perfect, too perfect, no scar marring her face, her pulses purple in mere pretence. Her hands were white, white like Claire's when he held her.

The machine didn't work again. Just like it didn't work all the other 319 times.

"I warned you," she began, like she always did.

"You always do."

"And yet you continue, like a fool."

"Yes."

She blew her hair out of her face. "Time is not something you can order around. Nor is Fate."

He stayed silent.

"Death is perhaps the most inflexible of all," she murmered, almost to herself. "You can retain it but never make it turn back on itself."

He turned the machine on once more.

* * *

Descole was studying a method of drilling Misthallery. He'd been planning on building a giant drilling machine that could work as an attack machine for some reason - aesthetic, probably. Dimitri was more interested in studying the area. The discovery of the Golden Garden had been attempted many times before, and he was pretty sure that the city didn't hold any secrets below it.

Descole scoffed at the idea, like he always did. Really, the only thing more infuriating about the man than his arrogance were his identical suits he wore every bloody day.

But Dimitri wasn't up for his stubborness, and he poured over topographical charts of the area and marked the areas that had been studied. He ended up with more marked pieces of land than unmarked, all that was missing were some mountain tops, an odd field and, of course, the dam.

The dam.

It stuck with him for some reason. It bothered him at breakfast, when he brushed his teeth, when he kept up wih Descole's research, when he was trying to sleep.

The dam.

Full of water.

Flooding an area of land that wouldn't be normally unacessible.

An area of land that could be large enough to house a huge underground garden.

* * *

Dimitri met Claire Foley in a Summer vacation. He'd been new to London, getting ready to begin the first year of University. She was the friend of the sister of his roommate. He'd felt obliged to go with him to a student meeting at a café. A gloomy, awkward meeting that he'd hoped to get out of as soon as possible.

And then she entered, red flowing with the small breeze, dark shiny eyes, a smile on her lips. She was older, a year above him, and he knew in that moment that he'd work up his grade to get into her classes.

One night, a few months later, he'll stay awake, unable to sleep, thinking of red hair and black eyes.

* * *

The girl woke up in a cold, large room filled with electronics and wires. Something shined everywhere she looked. She looked at her hands - pale, white skin and long, healthy nails. Her dress was well-made, but slightly torn and dusty. She'd probably been laying on the floor for quite some time.

The lack of memories bothered her somewhere in the back of her mind. She couldn't remember who she was, where she came from. But she couldn't find herself worried either. It was like some strange tendril forced her away from such matters.

It provided her with a name. It felt right on her tongue, as she tried it out, but not for herself. Was it truly hers? Was she really-

The tendrils moved her away from that thought, and she fell in blissfull emptiness.

A man stood in the middle of the room, she vaguely noticed. He must have been the responsible for the shackles gracing her pulses. He was covered in a reddish substance that smelled vaguely metallic - it reminded the girl of something, a vague feeling, of heat in her belly and pools of red and someone screaming. There was a cape on the floor, and a mask.

The man looked at her. He pulled a lever.

* * *

Descole might be a genius and an archeologist, but Dimitri was a physicist. He understood how the world works, how logic works. He knew his way around a puzzle, and he knew how to try a different angle.

The masked man would have never gone anywhere without him and Raymond. He would have caught someone's attention far too quickly, for his penchant for dramatics and stubborn ways. Had Dimitri not refused the first twenty-five drafts of his plans for every minor Legacy, they would have been killed long ago.

But Dimitri was still glad he'd found the man. Without him, he would never have been able to find a suitable power source for his new project. He just couldn't let the man use it for his petty revenge first.

* * *

The girl was staring at him again.

"What do you want!" he snapped. She blinked.

"Is she really worth all of this?"

"Yes," the answer was short and dry, like he was stating the answer to 'is the sky blue?' or 'is London foggy?'

She hummed in aprecciation. He occupied himself by clicking some buttons and pretending she wasn't there.

"I don't know what she was like."

He peeked at the girl. A short answer would sate her curiosity, perhaps.

"She was beautiful," he began "beautiful and kind and intelligent. She was top of her class, and had so many opportunities lined up for her. She had so may friends, no one could dislike her. She loved everyone. And those days, those sunny days, her hair shined and her smile was always there."

The girl looked at him, and he fidgeted nervously.

"Those days, I always thought I could go over to her and say 'Hello, I love you'."

"Did you love her?"

"Yes."

"No."

And that sentence shook him. Shook him to his core, and he rised up, tall but bent, and slapped the girl hard on her cheek. No mark on her face - she wasn't even pretending to be human at this point. She rose to her feet, eyes cold.

"You obsessed over her. You didn't love her. And now that she is gone, you killed the men who helped you gain what you needed after they became a liabilty. You used me as a power source in your machine, planning to tear time and space apart to save her. You don't care about anything else. Just your idea of what she was."

He saw red.

"Just an idea. Just a delusion. And all for a pointless failure of an endeavour. Humans are still fools, aren't they," her eyes glow blue.

And he grabs a loose pipe and smacks it against her head, and again, and again, and again, until it is caved in and a small spark of electricity dies out. No blood stains the pipe.

The machine explodes.

**Author's Note:**

> Something fun about Sisyphus: one day he captured Death with the chains that it would have used to make sure he didn't run away.  
> Another fun thing about Sisyphus: when he finally died, he was condemned to push a rock up a hill, but every time he reached the top, it would roll down again, making it fruitless.
> 
> Something fun about Tumblr: I read the recommendation! Thank you! I appreciate every sort of feedback. :)


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